Traveling home to New Brunswick from Vancouver, BC is always an all day affair, but one that I never mind. It conjures up many memories, especially when my route takes me via Montreal.

Although I only lived in Montreal from age two or three to age ten, it felt like a lifetime and many of my foundation moments began here - at good old 830 - 56th Ave. Lachine, Pt. Claire, Quebec.

My flight from Vancouver had a stop over at the Trudeau Airport in Dorval. When I was a kid it was always a big deal to come here with my folks - the cool and spacious interior, polished granite floors and mid-century/Expo '67 streamlined modernism always held a certain appeal to me although I couldn't begin to articulate why until I was much older (with a few more art history courses under my belt!). How we loved the airplanes too. Way before the TV series "Mad Men", we had the gracious charm of "stewardesses" not to mention half decent food served in the manner of fine dining - with real cutlery. I came upon an Air Canada teaspoon this evening when I was drying dishes at my folks home. I can imagine slipping one into my handbag, wrapped in a monogrammed linen hankie, as a "keepsake" (is that bad?).

Photo by sylv1rob1/iStock / Getty Images

This is the best photo because you can actually see where I sat! It even has a "frame" around it! Although this is not the plane it looks very much like it. My window looked out to the propeller and I thought of my brother and his model airplane collection - many of which hung from his bedroom ceiling. We loved to visit the airport to watch planes coming and going...

The flight from Montreal to Moncton, NB was especially eventful this year. I sat by a guy who turned out to be a friend of my brother - my family and I have known him for years! I was also treated to a live lightening storm in the distance as we took off. There is nothing quite like seeing lightning from an airplane...a ringside seat to Mount Olympus and the gods of old.

Having just enough time between flights to say hello to the ghost of my young self in the terminal, I'm thinking that in the near future an actual visit to Montreal is in order. - there is so much I would like to revisit and to write about!

As we flew off for the final leg of the journey to NB, I looked for the search light across the Montreal sky, a familiar steady beacon that I used to see from my bedroom as I fell asleep...a little girl, dreaming of the far off places she would go.